According to the song, Roy Clark never picked cotton. But his mother did and his brother did and his sister did and his daddy died young working in a coal mine. And Bobbie Gentry was chopping cotton while her brother was bailing hay. And the Joads hoped they could find work in the cotton fields.
I.e., white people picked cotton too.
I did, my mother did, my grand parents did.................
I’m as white as white can be....one of my early memories is staying home from school sick, and since there was no one to watch me I went to work with my grandparents. Picking cotton. I rode around on their sacks as they walked down the aisles picking cotton.